AbstractThe traditional essay has long established itself as a stable and reliable assessment within higher education. However, it reinforces an uneven power balance whereby the tutor passes judgement on a student’s written work according to a set of criteria. Drawing on the work of Fiona English, I have experimented with a ‘visual essay’ assessment as this affords students more opportunities to express their knowledge. They write this from the perspective of a literary figure, so that they are able to have a more emotional relationship with the text they are studying. To demonstrate this process I put forward my argument from the perspective of Arthur Seaton, the anti-hero of Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.